Homecoming
by brizo3
Summary: Sam gets home from Atlantis to something unexpected. S/J. Been done before but please give it a go.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: None of the characters or objects described herein belong to me, otherwise I wouldn't need to write it on here. Please don't sue, I don't have any money.

A/N: Okay guys, this is my first fic. Been reading for a while and decided to finally take the plunge myself. Please review, constructive criticism would be great but frankly I'll be happy with any comments at all. So, here goes...

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Colonel Samantha Carter turned the black sedan she had borrowed from the car pool into her road and sighed. She was almost home. After a year spent in the Pegasus galaxy in command of Atlantis, she was willing to admit to herself that she wasn't entirely sure where home was anymore. She had been expecting to be on a flight to Washington now, on her way to her performance review by the I.O.A. but things hadn't turned out quite the way she had been anticipating.

Richard Woolsey's rather abrupt announcement at the base of the SGC's ramp had left her reeling, and had completely turned around the order in which events should be happening. She had been meant to go to Washington, then come back to the Springs in a couple of days to meet up with SG-1 and attend the extraction of Ba'al. Instead she was going home, allegedly to get some rest, going to Ba'al's extraction and then going to Washington for a more lengthy debrief on her year in Atlantis. SG-1 was currently off world so she was stuck on her own until they got back, and was still trying to muddle through exactly what had happened back at the SGC, even though it was now three hours after the fact. Another part of her was trying to work out exactly what skill set Woolsey thought he was in possession of but that she was lacking.

When she first caught sight of the house she hadn't lived in in over a year she frowned. The light was on in the front room and was spilling out onto the garden, colouring the grass yellow in the dusky light. There was another car parked in front of her house, a grey Ford which she didn't recognise. Pulling in behind it, she eyed her house cautiously. Were SG-1 on world she would think that it was them, but this wasn't the case. She highly doubted that a burglar would be quite so obvious about their presence, although in her line of work she knew it would be better to err on the side of caution.

She got out of the car, grabbed the bag from the back seat and slowly made her way up the path to the front door, cursing the fact that she was unarmed. She didn't make a habit of walking around with her sidearm, but promised herself that if this turned into a bloodbath she would change that in future.

Her keys jingled softly before she could silence them and she cursed under her breath. After a moments pause, and no noise from behind the door she turned them in lock and pushed open the door. No-one immediately leapt out at her so she gently put her bag down in the hallway, softly closed the front door and padded silently towards her front room, stopping in the doorway as the reason for the light made itself immediately apparent. She smiled softly to herself. There was a Major General asleep on her sofa.

General Jack O'Neill was sprawled out in front of her in his civvies, feet on her coffee table, mouth slightly open, and snoring softly. Being careful not to move and wake him, she drank him in. she hadn't seen him in a year, and she took her time now. He'd been at her going-away ceremony, had taken her aside and given her a hug, which she'd relished, and a pep talk, which she'd duly taken in, but that had been the last time. They'd exchanged a few e-mails, but that had been it. She wondered what he was doing here. She knew that he was meant to go off world with them to witness the end of Ba'al, but had assumed that he would show up on the morning they were due to leave. His current position indicated otherwise.

She pondered for a while on the best way to wake him. For a man who was a notoriously light sleeper when off world he could be surprisingly difficult and slow to awaken when on Earth. The incident with his clone had taught her that much, along with the few times she had had to call him at odd hours to inform him of something vital when he had been running the SGC.

Leaving him for the moment she headed back into the hallway to remove her shoes, then headed for the kitchen to make coffee. Having Jack lying on her couch had derailed her brain slightly from Woolsey, but she was still feeling a bit foggy about the whole thing, and anyway, old habits are hard to break.

When she returned to her living room he was still asleep, even though she hadn't been deliberately or especially quiet while sorting herself out. She sprawled herself out in the chair opposite him, putting her own feet on the coffee table so that they rested just shy of his own, and sipped at her coffee while looking at him.

A sly smile lit her face as she realised something. She was currently without an assignment. While she had been on Atlantis she had been outside Jack's chain of command, although admittedly not in a position to do much about it. Now she was no longer in Atlantis, she was back home, and still out of his chain of command. Even if that changed in the near future he was retiring soon anyway, as she had admitted to Dr. Keller when they had been stuck down that mine-shaft, so there wouldn't be much more of a wait whatever happened.

After her dad had died the two of them had lapsed into a sort of unspoken understanding. Through a series of looks they had settled upon the idea that they both wanted to be with each, and that although it hadn't been possible then, that they would be together in the future. As an unspoken rule of this unspoken agreement, neither of them would see anybody else, they would wait until they could be together. Thinking back on it she marvelled that the two of them seemed to have the power to say so much to each other without actually saying anything. But that was in the past.

Bringing herself back to the present, and with a slightly silly smile plastered on her face, she nudged the bottom of his foot with her toes. He twitched slightly and stopped snoring but didn't wake up. She did it again, this time dragging her toes up slightly to gently tickle the sole of his foot. He swallowed lightly, and moved the foot she had been tickling out of her reach, which didn't really matter because she merely turned her attention to the other one.

This time she jabbed lightly at the sole and was rewarded as his brow creased and his eyelids lifted ever so slightly so he could peer at her from under his eyelashes. For a second the frown deepened as he puzzled out what exactly was going on, then:

"Carter?" His voice was rough with sleep and contained a rather healthy dose of confusion. She merely smiled at him and waited for him to catch up. She rather enjoyed Confused Jack, so simply studied his face, committing it to memory again after so long apart. He blinked, then his eyes opened fully and he glanced around the room, remembering where he was.

"Carter!" A smile lit his face and he removed his feet from the table, standing up and then rounding it to remove the mug of coffee from her hands and pull her to her feet before engulfing her in the tightest hug she had ever had the privilege of receiving off him. He smelt musky, with a hint of coffee, and also slightly sleepy, if it's possible to smell of sleep. Whatever it was he smelt of she breathed it in deeply as her arms came up to wrap around his torso and hold him tightly to her. She breathed out lightly in contentment as he dipped his head into the crook between her head and shoulder, nestling his nose against her neck. She turned her own head towards his, pressing her nose against his ear.

She couldn't say for certain how long they stayed that way. In some ways in felt like millennia, but in others like only a few seconds. Either way, they eventually drew apart, although not very far, and Jack took it upon himself to state the obvious,

"You're back." She smiled and nodded, enjoying the fact that he still had his arms around her.

"You noticed, huh?"

His grin grew wider. "Yeh, youbetcha. Can't get anything past me." Then he blinked and turned back to look at the sofa. "I fell asleep?" he questioned. Sam bit her bottom lip to keep from grinning and nodded. He frowned. "Huh, didn't mean to do that."

"How long have you been here?" She questioned.

"I think the more appropriate question is how long were you sitting there staring at me?"

"I asked first. And I wasn't staring." He raised an eyebrow at her. "I wasn't... I've only been here a couple of minutes, and you still haven't answered my question." He grinned and took pity on her,

"Got here this afternoon. Thought I'd get the place warmed up for you." The comment gave her a jolt and reminded her of her current career situation.

"You know?" Her tone wasn't accusing, merely questioning, but he sighed and looked at the floor.

"Yeah, I know. They told me about their decision on Monday." His eyes raised back to hers. "Look Carter, if it's any consolation I think you were doin' a great job."

"_Were_." She highlighted bitterly, adding a wry smile to take the edge off.

"Were, and would no doubt have continued to do, had the I.O.A. been less up themselves and more aware of what's actually going on." There was no denying the irritation in his voice, and her own pain lessened somewhat at his defence of her. "And I told them that." She smiled lightly,

"Did you create an international incident?" Jack considered this,

"No, but I may have done if certain members had remained in my path for much longer."

Her smile widened and she took a small step forward, lowering her head to rest against his chest. His arms tightened around her as his buried his nose in her hair.

Stood there in his arms she considered the reassignment might be no bad thing if it meant she could get more of this in her life. She knew that soon they'd have to talk about what they were going to do. Actually talk talk, not only gesture talk, and she knew that that would almost certainly be very difficult for them, neither really being ones to expose their feelings, even if it was only to each other. Like pulling off a band-aid, she thought, best we get it over with. Although as his arms tightened around her even more, the majority of her was in no great hurry to get on with it.

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A/N: Don't forget to review...


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: OK, so I said that this was complete, 'cause I wasn't planning on writing more. But people seem to be interested so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Oh, and I apologise for the use of 'Brigadier General' in the last chapter. I know Jack was a Major General while Sam was in Atlantis, so why I wrote Brigadier is anybody's guess. And I do have a quick question for anybody who knows and wants to tell: if I change things like that and then replace the chapter do I keep the reviews for the original chapter? Cuz I kinda like 'em, and I don't know if they stay or not. Thanks.

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Sam awoke to the smell of frying bacon. Her eyes still shut, for a second she was very confused. Her quarters in Atlantis were so far removed from that smell that she would only catch a whiff of it if the kitchen staff were preparing a hog roast for the entire population of the Pegasus galaxy. Reality set in. She wasn't in Pegasus any more. She was at home, in her own bed. And, remembering the previous evening, apparently she also had a Jack O'Neill in her kitchen. She rolled onto her back and stretched out her limbs, yawning loudly. A quick glance at the clock on her bedside table told her that it was 0800. The bacon smell coming from her kitchen was very enticing, causing her mouth to water, and her stomach made her mind up for her. She got up.

Ten minutes later, washed, brushed and dressed, she meandered into her kitchen to find Jack frying eggs.

He glanced up at her, "Morning sleepyhead. Thought I'd be eating breakfast on my own for a while there."

She smiled lightly back at him, "There better not be any beer in my eggs, Sir." She moved across to a cupboard and got herself a glass, which she then filled with water.

"Carter, I hate to break it to you, but even I don't consume beer at 8 o'clock in the morning."

"Really?" She asked, settling herself at the breakfast bar.

"There are some lines I don't cross." He smirked across at her, and she simply raised her eyebrow at him in response. The smirk grew and he focused his attention back on the frying pan in front of him.

She gave voice to the question on her mind even though she was fairly sure of the answer, "Where did all this stuff come from?"

"Oh, I swung round a grocery store on my way here." He answered without looking at her.

"Sir," she protested, "you really didn't have to do that." She glanced at the frying pan, starting to feel uncomfortable. "Or this. I don't want to..."

"Carter." He cut her off, "Shut up." She closed her mouth as he turned to look at her. "It's no problem. I wanna do it." He started dishing the food out onto the two plates in front of him. "Think of it as a 'Welcome Home'." He set a plate in front of her, put his own next to it and plonked himself down on the other side of the bar, dropping a couple of pairs of knives and forks in between the two plates. Sam smiled slightly,

"Thank you, Sir."

"Anytime. Now eat."

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"Do you know what time SG-1 is due back, Sir?" She asked him as she rinsed the plates and stacked them in the dishwasher. He had protested but she put her foot down. He might still be her superior officer but if he was going to buy the groceries and cook breakfast then she was damn well going to clean up, whatever he said. He wasn't her butler. "I know that they're back today, but not what time."

"Umm, about 1400 I think." Came the response. "You wanna go meet 'em?"

"It's either that or kick around the house all day."

He smiled at her, knowing as well as she did that there was no way Samantha Carter could sit around the house all day, even if her closest friends weren't coming back from off-world and she hadn't seen them for come time. "When's the last the all of you were together?"

Having finished with the dishwasher she leaned back against the counter-top and looked at him. "The last time we were all together? About a year, same as the last time I saw you." She stared across the kitchen at him, her eyes conveying a message which she knew he'd got when he swallowed lightly and looked at the ground. She smiled to herself. Same old Jack O'Neill. Talk to him about explosives and you were fine. Talk to him about astrophysics and he got confused. Try and talk to him about anything even approaching feelings and he gave new meaning to the term reticent.

He rallied quickly though, probably through years of practice, "So what d'you wanna do before then?"

She glanced at the clock hanging on the wall, 0830. Five and a half hours to kill. She exhaled heavily, blowing the air out from between her lips, thinking. "What is there to do in the Springs these days?"

"You're asking me?" He replied. "I live in D.C."

"Well, yes Sir, but I assume that you've been in back here more often than I have in the past year..."

He leant back against the breakfast bar and stared at the ceiling, presumably thinking. When he glanced down at her she raised her eyebrows in question, but the blank look in his eye told her pretty much what she needed to know.

For his part, Jack was having a hard time concentrating on anything after that look she'd given him a few minutes ago. He'd changed the subject in the hope that she'd have an idea what to do, so they could then go do it and he could get out of her kitchen, which seemed to have increased in temperature considerably. Unfortunately his plan had been derailed by her asking for his opinion, which, if truth be told, was rapidly coalescing into a plan for something they could do which only involved himself, Sam, and a bed. And if they didn't come up with an idea soon he suspected that the bed part would become unimportant, even if his back would hate him afterwards. His mind cast around frantically, searching for something, anything, which would get him out of here. Out of touch as he currently was with women, he was fairly sure that falling into bed with Sam right now wasn't the best option, and that was even assuming she would go along with the idea.

Scurrying around as it was, his brain threw out an idea from his mouth without consulting the other part of his brain entitled 'rational thinking'.

"We could go see a movie." He paused, and the rest of his brain caught up. He frowned, "No, wait, maybe not." Searching for a logical reason why they shouldn't do that without involving the words 'you', 'me', 'date', and 'dark room' was harder than he might have thought, but luckily he was distracted as he glanced at Sam to see her biting her bottom lip in a poor attempt not to laugh. "What?" He frowned at her.

She shook her head at him and seemed to make a more concerted effort not to smile, "Nothing, Sir."

"Better not be laughing at a superior officer." He mumbled under his breath as his eyes returned to scanning her kitchen and determinedly not looking at Carter.

"Actually Sir, it's not a bad idea."

"It's not?" He asked, trying to find the words to tell her that in his current mental state the only way he'd be able to sit in a dark room with her would be if they sat on opposite sides of it, and if he tied himself to his chair, screwed his eyes shut and hummed 'Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead." for two hours.

"Do you know what's on?"

Looking her in the eye he could see that she was deadly serious. "No. You sure about this?"

She smiled at him, "C'mon Sir, I haven't been to the movies in a year, it'll be fun." She headed out of the kitchen towards her study, presumably to check to listings and see what was on. He hoped they would be something bloody or scary he could convince her to watch, because if she wanted to watch a chick-flick even God Himself wouldn't be able to save him.

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A/N: So, obviously, this isn't the end. I figure that now I've extended it I might as well go all the way. Unless you think it's terrible and I needn't bother, in which case I'll run crying under the stairs. Seriously, feedback is good, constructive criticism is better, and flames will be treated with flame retardant chemicals to prevent them spreading, and then ignored.


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